Religion News Service – Dr. Anthea Butler

Why Trump — and some of his followers — believe he is the Chosen One

ProfB — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 06:06:29 +0000

(RNS) — This week, President Trump took on two new titles, one bestowed upon him, and the other self-proclaimed.

First, in a series of tweets, the president quoted Wayne Allyn Root, a noted conspiracy theorist and Messianic Jew, who said that “President Trump is the greatest President for Jews and for Israel in the History of the world,” and “The Jewish People love him like the King of Israel.”

If being named king was not enough, the president would go on to state later that day at an impromptu press availability with the media that he was “the Chosen One” to take on China.

To use a Yiddish term, oy vey, indeed.

For Christians, and for Jews as well, Trump’s self-aggrandizement with these two titles is very problematic.

First, the last king of the Israelite Kingdom was Hoshea, who may have ruled from around 732 BCE to 723 BCE.

Second, to speak of a king or Messiah-type figure for Jews is problematic, since some Jews think that the Messiah has yet to come. For Christians, Jesus is the “Chosen One” or Messiah, and sometimes, the title of “Chosen One” is an Apocalyptic term to describe when Satan will return to the Earth.

A gold coin featuring King Cyrus and President Trump being sold on the Jim Bakker Show. Video screenshot

You can see the problem. The president’s self-congratulatory moments resulted in real consternation for both atheists and believers alike. Trump’s words and actions reminded some of the “Left Behind” series or an older version of Rapture movies like “A Thief in the Night.” But these kinds of titles and appellations have a bigger issue, and one worth noting.

Trump’s two announcements this week reveal why some evangelicals see him as “God’s Chosen One” — a King Cyrus-like figure, anointed by God to save America from cultural collapse. That claim was made in books and even a feature film about a so-called Trump Prophecy. Some charismatic Christian followers of Trump even created a coin with images of Trump and Cyrus on it to use during their prayers.

There have been a series of paintings of Trump as a kind of redeemer figure by John McNaughton. Others depict Trump being hugged by Jesus, or signing bills at the resolute desk with Jesus standing behind him. These images, for some evangelicals, are fan images of the hopes and the realities they believe President Trump’s election has wrought.

Trump’s declaration, however, of being the Chosen One and his enthusiastic reception of “King of Israel” may end up backfiring on him. For one thing, some Christians would consider using the phrase “the Chosen One” very much like blasphemy. Some evangelicals were dismayed, comparing Trump to Herod Agrippa in Acts chapter 12, who was called God. Herod, of course, accepted that accolade, and it did not end well for him.

President Trump speaks with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Aug. 21, 2019. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Others, especially those who are Dominionist, would be pleased that President Trump is finally being recognized for who they really believe that he is. Some evangelicals have spent a great deal of time since 2016 extolling Trump in this manner. So it is no surprise that he is accepting these accolades.

Meanwhile, Trump’s acceptance of being “the King of Israel” may just sound strange to ears not attuned to some quarters of Christian belief. But for those quarters of Christianity who believe in end-time prophecies and other beliefs about famous men, it is a sobering moment.

For some evangelicals, thinking of Trump as “King of the Jews” means that because he is the protector of Israel, Jews are that much closer to becoming “saved” and converted to Christianity. For Dominionist groups, some of which are already in Israel waiting for the “last days,” Trump’s embrace of this statement is further confirmation that he is God’s man in the last days, who will help to bring Christ back to Earth.

Perhaps the best way to understand Trump’s statements is in another context altogether, and that is by watching the new Netflix series by journalist and writer Jeff Sharlet, called “The Family.”

Based on the 2009 book by Sharlet, the series covers the activity of The Family and C Street, which courted many politicians and holds the National Prayer Breakfast each year. Sharlet’s first article about this group, entitled “Jesus Plus Nothing,” is an excellent way to understand what may be behind Trump’s statements.

A still featuring President Trump from the Netflix docuseries “The Family.” Image courtesy of Netflix

For the Family, any man chosen for leadership positions is chosen by God, no matter what his personal faith life or beliefs may be. In their theology, God can use any male leader to achieve God’s purpose. To put it one way, Jesus cares more for the wolf than the sheep. A strong man can make things happen.

A strong man is God’s man, no matter what sins he may or may not have committed.

This may be sobering, but in fact, hearing Trump call himself the Chosen One is the upshot of what some Christians believe to be the role of political leadership.

Trump’s declarations are not so far off, not only from his churchgoing days of Norman Vincent Peale and positive thinking; it is also a pastiche of certain kinds of evangelical and End Time beliefs that are merging together along with conspiracy theories to empower his presidency with the evangelicals that back him.

Whether it is blasphemous or a unique election strategy, we may be hearing Trump make these kinds of statements throughout the 2020 campaign cycle.

https://religionnews.com/2019/08/23/why-trump-and-some-of-his-followers-believe-he-is-the-chosen-one/

Jerry Falwell Jr.’s fall, Liberty University and the myth of the Moral Majority.

ProfB — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 05:59:51 +0000

(RNS) — The woman you gave me made me do it.

No, that’s not Adam’s response to God about Eve eating the apple, but Jerry Falwell Jr.’s explanation of the “affair” between his wife, Becki Falwell, and Giancarlo Granda.

Jerry tried to get ahead of a Reuters story that broke about his wife’s sexual relationship with Granda by giving a preemptive story about her affair.

Turns out Jerry may have had “oversight” of the relationship by watching their sexual relations, inviting Granda on vacation and even listening to Becki and Granda’s conversations, according to Reuters.

This unsavory story says much about the sorry state of evangelicalism.

Morality — and the supposition that evangelicals have it — is not about personal behavior or piety. Instead, it is a bludgeon to be used against those who do not support evangelical beliefs or policies.

Looking back at Falwell, it is clear that he signaled this shift about evangelicals and morality in his support of President Donald Trump.

“I don’t think you can choose a president based on their personal behavior because even if you choose the one you think is the most decent,” he said in a Washington Post article in 2019, “there might be things that he’s done that you don’t know about. You don’t choose a president based on how good they are, you choose a president based on what their policies are.”

President Donald Trump talks with Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., right, during commencement ceremonies at the school in Lynchburg, Virginia, on May 13, 2017. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Indeed.

The schadenfreude that many are enjoying over Falwell’s fall from “grace” comes from the fact that the son of Jerry Falwell Sr., the man who ran the Moral Majority, has been anything but.

Jerry Falwell Jr. is not an aberration, but a sign of the shift that is happening in the evangelical movement.

It used to be that evangelicals were swift to rid their ranks of anyone who had the whiff of any sexual sin. Now, you can hang around for a long time, or at least until you take a pic with your pants unzipped, holding a drink, with your wife’s very pregnant assistant.

While evangelical churchgoers may cling to and embrace certain conservative biblical interpretations surrounding sexuality and gender, their 21st-century leaders care little for it. Jerry Falwell Jr. is one in a long list of men who’ve had to resign because of sexual dalliances or allegations of misconduct.

Ted Haggard, Bill Hybels, Perry Stone, Earl Paulk, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker are some names that come to mind.

They all sought power in many ways, some in the religious realm, but others in the political. In the case of Jerry Falwell Jr., he not only supported Trump but also acted as a surrogate attack dog in defense of Trump’s policies.

Falwell’s fall is another indication of the impotent witness of American evangelicalism.

It’s time to stop pretending that 21st-century evangelicalism is still a movement that believes in sexual morality and values.

It is a political movement with religious people who vote a certain way in order to get the judges, perks and favors that can be given to their leaders through political and economic power. It’s about personal pleasure at the expense of making life miserable for others by legislating a morality that some leaders don’t believe in, nor bother to practice.

Not all evangelicals are like Jerry Falwell Jr., at least in their personal life. One reason he resigned is that a group of Liberty graduates — and eventually the school’s board — had had enough.

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. gestures during an interview in his offices at the school in Lynchburg, Virginia, on Nov. 16, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Even his own brother seemed to shake his head at the state of evangelical leadership.

“The world doesn’t need another Christian hypocrite,” the Rev. Jonathan Falwell told students at Liberty after his brother’s departure.

Jonathan Falwell, who succeeded his father as pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church, did not criticize his brother by name in a sermon addressed to students.

Still, his message was clear.

“So many times we see Christians that are more focused on building their own brand than they are about building the kingdom of God,” he said.

Jerry Falwell Jr.’s fall matters because he is the son of Jerry Falwell Sr., the man who put evangelicals on the political and social map of America with the Moral Majority.

His public disgrace — and his apparent lack of contrition or shame — represents the rot in a movement that has never come to grips with its beliefs about sexuality, patriarchy, race and society that have influenced their ranks and American political life.

Evangelicals have sought to make America a Christian nation through education and political action while wrestling with their own desires to break free from the constraints of their conservative upbringings. Sometimes they win. Sometimes, like Falwell, they fail.

While this might be seen as just another sex scandal, I’d say that the fall of Falwell is proof that evangelicals who have fully embraced Trumpism have decided that their desire for power and position outweigh the gospel they claim to love.

In a distasteful final statement, Falwell quipped that he was “free at last” from Liberty.

Hopefully, we are free from him as well.

https://religionnews.com/2020/08/27/jerry-falwell-jr-s-fall-liberty-university-and-the-myth-of-the-moral-majority/

White evangelicals, don’t just condemn Christian nationalism. Own it.

ProfB — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 05:50:23 +0000

(RNS) — On Sunday, evangelical leader Beth Moore tweeted about the Jericho March, a pro-Trump bacchanal of racism and violence held in Washington, D.C., this weekend. “I do not believe these are days for mincing words,” she wrote. “I’m 63 1/2 years old & I have never seen anything in these United States of America I found more astonishingly seductive & dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism. This Christian nationalism is not of God. Move back from it.”

It’s about time. But it’s too late.

Moore, David French, Michael Gerson and other evangelical writers have been wringing their hands for years about evangelicals and Trump. They have made a cottage industry of the “I’m shocked” genre of commentary. This group is quick to proclaim they’re upset every time an evangelical pastor or a political leader widely supported by evangelicals acts up in the name of Trumpism.

This performance of piety in the face of evil is empty, because it does not deal with the core issue: white evangelicalism’s own racism.

Complain as they might about Trump, this president simply tapped into the racist id that has always been a foundation of American evangelicalism. Now that white mobs are marching and inciting violence, they export the racism and violence to a specter called Christian nationalism.

Here’s the hard, ugly fact: Evangelicals support the racism, sexism and violence done on their behalf by so-called Christian nationalists. Black Christians have seen this for more than 400 years. We are not surprised, and these evangelical writers shouldn’t be either. Evangelicals’ politics are about their power. They use morality to hide their thirst for it.

Evangelicals know full well the ugliness and perfidy of the people they vote into office, support with their dollars and those they listen to every Sunday in pulpits across the nation. They claim to hate the ugliness, yet they remain in the same pews and support the same political leaders.

The Southern Baptist Convention has spent considerable time in the past year condemning critical race theory, first with a resolution at their 2019 annual meeting and most recently with a statement from six Southern Baptist seminary presidents proclaiming that the theory is incompatible with the denomination’s statement of faith.

The SBC’s position on CRT conveniently dovetails with the Trump administration’s recent Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping, which cuts out “blame focused” diversity training at federal workplaces. Diversity training shows the inequities of life for many ethnic groups in America. The only ones who may be uncomfortable with those inequities being called out are those who are still perpetuating them.

The Black church has also come under fire from Republican politicians who love to visit Black churches for photo-ops but balk at the convicting message of the gospel. The upcoming runoff in the Georgia Senate race is an excellent example. Senator Kelly Loeffler, who attended a commemoration on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Ebenezer Baptist Church in January, is now digging up old sermons by Ebenezer’s pastor, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, to twist and misrepresent Warnock’s words (and the gospel itself).

Yet when participants of the march for Trump tore down and burned Black Lives Matter banners from Asbury United Methodist Church and Metropolitan AME Church, two historically Black houses of worship, on Saturday evening (Dec. 12), evangelicals condemn Christian nationalism — not the racism undergirding the Christian nationalism, not the Christian nationalism undergirding white evangelicalism. These things go together like peanut butter and jelly — a natural fit.

When white evangelicals ignore race as the motivating issue, I doubt their witness. Their handwringing, the self-abnegation, is meant to assuage their own discomfort, rather than the discomfort, violence and continual distress of Black people in America. I invite them to back up their words with actions, to reach out to those in the crossfire of this racial storm, to stand up against the leaders and associates in your denominations who remain silent because they voted for chaos instead of community.

If you don’t want to do that, then be quiet and get out of the way of the real prophets God is calling for such a time as this.

Repost from: https://religionnews.com/2020/12/14/white-evangelicals-dont-just-condemn-christian-nationalism-own-it/